CPRIT reform bill passes committee, moves to full Senate

A bill to reform the state’s troubled cancer-fighting agency was unanimously approved by the Senate Health and Human Services committee Tuesday, a week after committees in both legislative houses blasted agency officials for their failings.

The bill, which now moves to the full Senate for further consideration, aims at preventing conflicts of interest and improving accountability at the 4-year-old Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, which in December stopped awarding grants following disclosures it didn’t follow its rules in handing out tens of millions in taxpayer money.

“Our laws and rules have been twisted in ways that are disappointing and unacceptable,” said Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mount, Senate sponsor of the new bill and the 2007 legislation that created the agency. “This bill reinforces our clear legislative intent that CPRIT be operated in a fair, transparent manner that is befitting of its lifesaving mission. We will not allow the actions of a few individuals to stand in the way of our effort to find treatments and cures for this terrible disease.”

The bill contained two revisions to the legislation Nelson laid out a week ago, both recommended in a damning state audit released two weeks ago.

The first would make CPRIT’s governing board affirmatively vote to approve grants recommended to them. Under the existing policy, established to give power to the scientists reviewing grants, it takes a two-thirds vote by the governing board to reject a slate of awards positively evaluated by peer review committees.

The second revision would remove the Attorney General and Comptroller as members of CPRIT”s governing board, known as the oversight committee.

Under provisions previously laid out, the bill would also

• Prohibit members of the Oversight Committee from serving for more than two years.
• Prohibit CPRIT employees from maintaining offices at facilities owned by entities receiving or seeking funding from the cancer agency.
• Strengthen rules prohibiting business relationships between grantees and CPRIT employees, Oversight Committee Members, and peer reviewers.
• Prohibit members of the Oversight Committee, peer reviewers, and employees from serving on a grantee’s board of directors or related foundations.
• Direct the CPRIT Foundation, which raises funds to supplement the salaries of key agency officials, to publicly report financial information.

CPRIT, easily passed by voters in November 2007, has awarded nearly 500 grants totaling more than $800 million since it was established in 2009. The state auditors audit looked at 26 of the grants and found problems involving $56.3 million.